Friendship Sign
by KageNoYoko
Summary: Years after their adventures in Gensokyo, Marisa finally finds the urge to attempt to channel the powers of her best friend, but finds it harder than she expected. Perhaps it will take a bit of divine intervention for her to grasp the power of the Hakurei. Mari/Ali. A Touhou future story.


The magician hit the ground with only a soft grunt, her latest failure sending her flying from the backlash of the spell-card break, only her honed reflexes helping her to avoid any serious injuries.

Nearby, her wife watched on with some annoyance and acceptance of her "husbands" stubborn nature, and voiced her concerns, "Marisa, don't you think that you've tried long enough to get this? ever since we were kids you have been..."

Marisa stood up straight and turned to her wife, casually adjusting the brim of the black hat atop her head, shooting the tall woman a cocky grin as she held a spell-card between the fingers of her other hand, "Not to worry Alice, I just need to keep working at it. Someday, I'll figure it out."

Alice released a loud groan of annoyance at the woman's determination, but finally gave up on talking her out of this silly "plan" of hers for the day. Gesturing with a hand idly, she called along the young fairy-like girl in a pretty blue dress that had been floating around curiously, and began to make her way back to their house, "Come Shanghai, let's leave "daddy" to her research."

The fairy-girl seemed to hesitate for a moment, bringing a small hand to her mouth as she looked between her mom and dad, before her dad gave her a thumbs up and a few words of encouragement, "No worries kiddo, I'll be along in a few hours. Your mom probably needs you to help with some things around the house."

She then added in a slightly cockier tone, "Besides, we both know Alice-mommy is useless without you around."

"I heard that!" Alice warned from out of sight, probably already on the path back to the house without waiting for their child to catch up, expecting her to stay with her dad.

"I know you did!" Marisa teased back, before making a shooing motion to Shanghai, who gave her dad a big smile before flying off after her mom. Sighing as the clearing became empty once more, Marisa took the chance to fall to her butt in the soft grass, and begin to stare up at the sky.

Up above, the clouds drifted by lazily, and Marisa thought for a second she could see a tall fairy with long blue hair darting through them, being chased by a smaller fairy with teal hair. Bringing up the rear of the strange group was a fairy with golden wings and green hair, and Marisa tutted as she expected her to be lecturing the two as they played.

"Things used to be so simple around here," Marisa mused to herself as she laid there. It was all tea, Danmaku, and stealing in those days. Now she had a family to take care of, that mountain shrine was training it's third generation of Miko's, Kourin had closed his shop and moved into the human village with that school teacher, and the scarlet devil mansion had disappeared from Gensokyo, taking it's eccentric occupants with it, with only a written promise from the seven-day magician that they would return someday, and that she expected all of her books to be ready to return by then.

"Well," The witch spoke up, lifting herself back into a sitting position in the grass, before getting to her feet once more, "Can't succeed if I don't keep trying."

Moving back to the centre of the clearing, Marisa held out the spell-card, and began to channel her energy through it once more, falling into the familiar trance she had grown used to from years of practice, and began to chant under her breath.

'I have to wonder what I'm doing wrong with this,' Marisa thought to herself as she felt the power building up in her hands, 'Whenever I saw her do it, it seemed so easy.'

'Then again, everything she did always seemed easy,' She mused, feeling the power growing, and preparing to brace herself in case of another backlash.

'C'mon,' She began to chant, 'work this time, give me a little bit of that power you never bothered using but always had dancing under your skin.'

Just as the power began to fluxuate, and the spell would have normally backlashed at the girl, instead it seemed as though a deep calm entered the clearing, as all sound around Marisa seemed to sink into a peaceful silence, and a comforting presence fell over her.

"You know," An amused voice spoke up behind her, "All you ever had to do was ask, Marisa."

The blonde's golden eyes widened slightly in surprise, as the power in her hands seemed to stabilize, and her spell-card began to glow with a golden light, signalling it was ready.

With the cocky grin of an excitable girl lost to time many centuries ago, Marisa Kirisame announced her newest spell-card "Friendship sign: bond of the Red-Black eternity!"

**X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X**

For some reason she felt like laughing, as she laid there in the grass once again, the sun shining down on her as she basked in the afterglow of making a new spell-card.

She had been lifting spells off of people for her entire life, never asking, always taking anything she wanted, and changing it to suit her needs. But there was always one person that was always just out of reach, who she couldn't touch to steal from.

"Ha Haaa" her laughter trailed off as the new spell card burned with the same fiery determination she had felt moments ago, along with a comforting warmth that she hadn't felt in a very long time.

"Y'know," she muttered, reaching out to grab her hat, which had been knocked off from the release of her spell-card, "Maybe I ought to go pick up Shanghai and visit the shrine today, leave a donation for that poor girl and see how she's been doing with all of the Youkai activity lately," The blonde mused.

Flexing her hand, a familiar and well-worn wooden broom appeared in front of her, which she gripped with her free hand, before looking back to the sky.

"Looks like godhood suits you, Reimu," The magician smirked before taking off.

**X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X**

**This was an interesting mini-project idea I thought up while skimming a few 4koma on Danbooru (again), and something that I realized after doing a bit of thinking on the topic, would fit together with another universe I've had plans to write, but still haven't gotten to.**

**A few matters that probably need to be pointed out. Yes this is intended to take place many years in the future of Gensokyo, explaining why there is a third generation of Moriya shrine maidens being trained.**

**Yes, Marisa did eventually attain Youkai-hood with the help of Alice and Patchoulli. Did she marry Alice before or after that? Up to you guys to decide. What is Shanghai? I guess you could call her a fully autonomous doll, like Alice always wanted to create.**

**I may have gotten it into my mind this version of Shanghai follows the rules of Touhou Nekokayou, or Scarlet Weather Archives in Japanese Red, by Kimikomuffin. if you don't know what happens there then I'm not going to spoil it for you, and I'd encourage everyone that hasn't read it before to go and give it a look-see. It's really cute, and probably one of the most ridiculously funny Touhou 4koma I've read yet. And I read a lot of 4koma.**

**The three fairies mentioned may have also been inspired a little bit by Kimikomuffin, but also from a video (videos) called Touhou Ice Fairy Sister (Warning NSFW: there's a particular scene that's a bit ecchi). I think a lot of you can deduce what I was going for, I hope.**

**The Scarlet devil mansion leaving? Remilia got bored of Gensokyo after so many years, so she decided to return to the other side of the border to see how things are, and if vampires are still feared. Patchy didn't have time to collect her books from Marisa, so she left a note telling her to have them all ready by the time they came back.**

**and finally, Reimu being a goddess, and Marisa's final line. That...will be explained in the follow-up piece to this (whenever I get to it), that I've had plans to write for a while, but never got around to. It should explain everything about this universe in a neat little package, and will (hopefully) not leave any questions.**

**Anyways, regardless of all that, I hope that you guys enjoyed. Ja Ne! **


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